Monday, September 22, 2008

I'm sure most of you probably don't give a rat's ass about this science story but I'm a nerd and I think it's cool so it gets it's own post; I still remember the discovery of the first extrasolar planet back in 1995 and since then we've discovered literally hundreds more. From DVICE.com:

Encircled in the picture above is the first planet from an alien solar system ever seen by humans. Located 500 light years from Earth, it's a planet eight times bigger than Jupiter. While it looks close to this sun-sized star in the picture, it's actually 11 times farther away from it than Neptune is from our sun.

Scientists have found numerous planets by detecting gravitational "wobble" in stars, however “this is the first time we have directly seen a planetary mass object in a likely orbit around a star like our Sun,” said David Lafrenière, the lead author of a paper about the discovery. The University of Toronto astronomers who took this shot say the planet is probably orbiting this star, but add there's a slight chance it could be just hanging there in space. They're still not even sure if it's moving in sync with the star, which will take two more years of observation to determine.

2 comments:

one L bill
said...

I'm supposing chances of life are slim since that thing looks like a raging inferno. But I suppose there could be a really creepy breed of fire-thriving aliens awaiting to take us over one day. [shiver]